


Floresco

by creamsodaplease



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Draco is an old man, Escapril Poetry Challenge, F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Harry is soft, M/M, Not Epilogue Compliant, but he sure acts like one, but that's okay, daily fic, draco is not literally an old man, escapril 2020, probably not, soft, we'll see if i make it through april
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23435059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creamsodaplease/pseuds/creamsodaplease
Summary: Ten years after the war, Harry Potter owns a cafe. His life is safe and quiet, until Draco Malfoy moves into the empty building next door with his flower shop. A love story of sorts.Written for Escapril 2020. (Hopefully) daily updates through April.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	1. dawn

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so excited to be writing this! I had the idea last night so I've been feverishly working on it. This is my first long fic so I hope it's not too painful. Also it's unbeta'd so all mistakes are my own. I'll see you on the other side :-)

It was still dark out. Harry liked the sky best just before sunrise and sunset when it turned a purple-blue-grey. The birds were only just waking up and the street smelled of wet earth—it had rained the night before. He walked along the pavement toward the new storefront next to his café. The letters bearing its name were finally affixed above the window: Floresco. They had been loading in all sorts of plants for ages already, and Harry hoped he could make it to the opening of the store. A tall man with long white-blond hair stood in front, looking up. That must be the owner. He looked vaguely familiar, but Harry couldn’t place him. He supposed he ought to make a good first impression and hurried inside his shop to prepare a peace offering in the form of coffee. Who doesn’t love coffee?

  
As he made the café au lait he had decided to give, he mused about the last owner. Julia had been wonderful. She ran a clothing store with her wife, Carrie, and her dog, Biscuit. She had helped Harry immensely in the early years of his store. He had only owned it for six or seven years, but it was hard in the beginning.

  
That was right after he had quit his job as an auror. He had only joined because he thought he should—after all, that was the natural path for him, wasn’t it? Saviour of the wizarding world, continuing his life of heroism and fighting Dark magic, he thought bitterly. After the war he was ruined. The pressure was so immense that some days he called off work because he couldn’t force himself out of bed. Grimmauld Place had been dark and decrepit, which certainly wasn’t doing him any favors. Hermione had finally forced him to see a Mind Healer, at least for a while. With her help he had decided to leave the Ministry and open a muggle café.

  
It made him happier than he had been in a long, long time. He loved to see people come in day after day and enjoyed making something they would enjoy. He also, of course, loved coffee. And Julia had been kind enough to take him under her wing and guide him through owning a business, something which he couldn’t thank her for enough. Her store had a boom in business last year, so she decided to move to a more populated area of London. He missed her, of course, but he was curious to see the new store.  
He walked out of the café, coffee in hand, and stopped dead. Of course the new owner looked familiar, he thought. Despite it being someone he hadn’t seen in nine or ten years, he had spent nearly every day for six years prior being antagonized by him. He looked almost the same, albeit less pointy. He had filled out some, at least from what Harry could see from behind, but that was to be expected. After all, they had both grown up. The real shock was his muggle clothes. He blended in well enough, Harry supposed, but he still wore clothes with a grace Harry seemed incapable to possess. He looked like he should be somewhere else, somewhere nicer, not in a side street of muggle London.  
“Draco Malfoy?”

  
*

  
“Draco Malfoy?”

  
Draco turned at the voice behind him to look into bright green eyes he hadn’t seen in a long, long time. It was Harry Potter. Inwardly, Draco cursed. Of course it was.

  
He looked as good as ever. His dark liquid hair was as unruly as ever and his eyes flashed just as they had in their schoolboy days. He had filled out some, and, though Draco hated to admit it, he looked fit. Potter wore jeans (despite years of living with muggles, Draco still despised jeans) and a button-down that looked irritatingly good on him.

  
“Harry Potter?” Draco drawled, trying to cast an image of nonchalance. It appeared to be working.

  
“Er, Malfoy, I own the café next door. Are you the owner of Floresco?” He was as unbearably awkward as ever, Draco decided. Some things never change.

  
“I am.” Best to answer with as little words as possible, Draco reasoned. After all, the Saviour’s little minions were the reason he was here.

  
“It’s just surprising, I guess. I didn’t think you would own a,” he leaned in, “muggle store.”  
Draco blanched. “And why wouldn’t I own a muggle store?”

  
“Well, I just thought, with your history, you know, it’s unlikely.” He flushed at that and Draco felt a flare of anger. With his “history?” If Potter wanted to talk about his Death-Eater past, he should just say it. There’s no use in beating around the bush.

  
It had been nearly ten years since his trial. He still felt guilty about it, especially when someone would wander into his store to tell him how he was death eater scum. He would never admit it, of course, but he still felt it. How could he not? He let death eaters into Hogwarts. He obeyed the Dark Lord. He took the Dark Mark, a daily reminder of the mistakes of his youth.

  
“My history? What could you possibly mean?” He asked sarcastically. He was sick of this already. “I’ve done my time, Potter. There’s no need to bring it up. And it’s not like I was the one to slice people up on the bathroom floor.”

  
Potter narrowed his eyes. “Look, Malfoy. I’m truly sorry about that. But you have no right to bring that up. I was a child and I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  
Draco could hear himself raising him voice. “Oh, I have no right to bring that up. Excuse me, Mr. Saviour. I’m sorry I’m not bowing at your feet like everyone else.”

  
Potter’s jaw flexed. “Take your fucking coffee. I’m sorry I tried to be nice.” Draco grabbed it from his hand and he turned on his heel and stalked back into his shop.

  
Draco grit his teeth and spoke to the air where Potter stood. “Thanks. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” Well. That went fantastic, didn’t it? He scowled and turned back around. He couldn’t afford to make stupid mistakes like that. He couldn’t let his feelings get the best of him.

  
As he carried pots inside, he thought about the letters. They first started arriving in the post right after he first opened the shop. Mostly it was by owl, but some were even sent through the muggle mailing system. Most of the time there were Howlers which he promptly Incendioed, but there was the odd cursed parcel. He picked up diagnostic charms quickly after the first one gave him a stinging hex, but they got more and more dangerous. After he was sent a flower pot charmed to explode into fragments of ceramic aimed toward his skin in his regular deliveries, he realized it was time to move. He moved to the place he had last. He stayed there for two or three years before receiving a letter cursed to rip his skin into strips and decided it was time to leave.

  
He thought about calling the aurors but never did. He didn’t see the need at first, and once the curses were more serious, he realized the aurors wouldn’t take him seriously. After all, why was an (ex) Death Eater complaining? As far as they were concerned, he was simply getting what he deserved.

  
He set down the pot he was carrying and wiped his forehead. He ought to owl Neville to tell him the shop was set to open. Draco was sure he would be excited to come, even if he mostly sold muggle plants. Of course, there was the back room, but those were for his potions hobby anyway, so they didn’t really count.

  
Hopefully his conversation with Potter didn’t set the precedent for their next interactions. Draco wished he could take back what he said. Whatever may come, Draco hoped he was ready.


	2. growth/decay

Draco sat at the counter and looked around. He loved Floresco’s new location. It was exactly what he wanted in the shop—the windows let in light that bathed the whole room. There were some built-in shelves in the wall, but they didn’t clash with the ones Draco had brought in himself. The plants were stressed, but not nearly as much as the last time he had moved. It was nearly perfect.

Despite how lucky he felt to be where he was, he couldn’t stop the ugly guilt gnawing at him. He was willing to look past what they had said to each other, but he kept replaying the moment when Potter walked away. It made him feel like he was eleven again, cowed by the refusal of a handshake. It was humiliating. He couldn’t get it out of his mind.

Potter was guilty too, of course. But Draco shouldn’t have brought up that awful day in the bathroom. Even thinking briefly about it, he remembered phantoms of the white-hot pain tracing through his abdomen. He shook his head to ignore it. He needed tea.

The bell rang. A customer was here. “Welcome to Floresco. How can I help you?” Draco said politely, trying to push all Potter-related thoughts out of his head. She looked to be a university student, loud and brassy with the confidence of youth. She was holding a coffee in one hand—that must be Potter’s doing. Wait, dammit! Draco shouldn’t be thinking of him.

She walked toward him. “I was wondering if you know what sort of flowers I should get my mom - she’s in the hospital.”

“Of course!” He said with a smile. “Let me get a book, it’ll help us. Are there any colors or flowers she likes in particular?” He reached under the counter for one of his most useful tools: a thick, leather-bound book titled “The Lost Art: A Guide to the Language of Flowers.” It was well-thumbed. It was also one of the last pieces of the Manor he had with him—he stole it from his father’s library, and he still felt a twinge of satisfaction looking at it.

“She likes the smell of jasmine,” she said after thinking about it. She fidgeted with her hands for a second before digging into her purse. “Do you know the owner of the café next door?” Draco’s hands, which had been flipping through The Lost Art, froze.

“Harry?” He wondered what this could possibly be about.

She nodded. “He wanted me to give this to you.” She held out a folding bit of parchment scrawled in Potter’s nearly unreadable handwriting with his name.

“Thank you,” he said, smiling as he uncapped a biro lying on the counter. He normally wouldn’t be so cheery, but something about the note did that to him. He wrote out a quick reply in his neat cursive script on a scrap of parchment from a delivery. “Now, you were saying your mother liked jasmine?”

*

Harry had been jumpy all day. The college student who walked in just smiled and said, “Rough day?”

He nodded. “You don’t know the half of it. What can I get you?”

“Caramel latte, and me too. I have to get flowers for my mum—she’s in the hospital after a bad fall.”

Harry thought of Malfoy. “You should go next door. I know the owner, he’s very dedicated. Actually,” he said, pulling a biro out of his pocket and grabbing a piece of parchment from next to the till before scribbling something, “can you give this to him? I can’t get off before lunch and I’m afraid it’s rather urgent.” On the parchment he wrote, “DM – I’m sorry for what I said. Come to dinner with me tomorrow so I can make it up to you? –HP”

She frowned. “You might as well phone him. But I will, even though it’s odd.”

He gave her a quick smile. “Thanks,” he said, and started on her latte as she tucked the folded piece of parchment into her purse.

When the girl walked back into the shop, Harry could feel himself getting hopeful despite his will. She smiled and waved a slip of white parchment, bright in the morning light.

“Here you are,” she said as she entered in the café, door jangling behind her. He snatched it from her hand, eager to read what was written. He still couldn’t shake the doubt in his stomach, but it dissipated just as he unfolded the parchment to read what it said: Are you asking me on date?

Harry grinned and tucked it into the pocket on his apron. This was, quite possibly, the biggest apology he had ever received from a Malfoy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was kinda rushed I'm sorry :/ I hope you're excited though, because tomorrow holds a dinner date for our boys :)


End file.
